Your Government Doesn’t Love You – Page 142

Check Your Gun Control Privilege

If you can’t beat them, join them. The social justice crowd spends a lot of time talking about privilege. What started out as valid point, that is some individual in society do enjoy privileges over others (for example, as a white male I’m less likely to be the target of police brutality), has become a mechanism to silence any and all opposition. If you don’t agree with somebody you are automatically accused of being privileged and therefore are no longer allowed to have an opinion (which, in my book, would mean the other person has an opinion privilege).

As this mess has gotten increasingly absurd I’ve tried to avoid it as much as possible. But the more I think about it the more I realize that gun control is a form of privilege. Specifically it’s something that only those who the social justice crowd traditionally label as privileged can enjoy.

Consider Michael Bloomberg. He’s arguably the most influential advocate of gun control in modern times. Granted it’s pretty easy to be the most influential advocate of gun control when you’re a billionaire and can personally fund several gun control advocacy groups. But those billions of dollars allow him to fund something else: armed body guards. Bloomberg even has enough cash to pay for armed body guards for his fellow gun control advocates.

Gun control, as the name implies, is about controlling who can have access to firearms. One question that should always be asked when the topic of gun control comes up is who gets to decide who can own a gun. The answer is always the state. And who makes up the state? A president who enjoys a lifetime of Secret Service protection and millionaire white males. In other words most of the people deciding who can have a gun are the very people most social justice advocates point out as being privileged.

So gun control is great if you’re on the top of society. It just sucks if you’re not. Unless the state has deemed you worthy of possessing a firearm or can afford to hire people who have been deemed worthy to shadow you 24/7 you’re mostly reliant on the police for protection. That’s not a good position to be in as police response times increase. And if you live in poorer neighborhoods, places where people arguably need protection the most, you’re going to suffer even longer response times. The further you are from the top the longer it will take to get state protection, if you get it at all.

This brings me to the main point of this post. Gun control works for those who social justice advocates consider privileged because they control who can possess guns and can afford body guards. The rest of us are more or less on our own. Sure we’re given access to police officers who may respond to our call for help if they’re not too busy, tired, or hungry. But if you need immediate defense you’re screwed.

There are bad people in this world, which is unfortunate. But so long as those people exist the need for self-defense will likewise exist. Whether you like guns or not you cannot argue against them being effective tools for self-defense. They’re equalizers that render physical ability and skill mostly irrelevant. A woman bound to a wheelchair can effectively use a gun to defend herself against an athletic male who means her arm. An African-American male can effectively use a gun to defend himself against an armed police officer who is attempting to brutalize him. Any social, physical, racial, or gender privileges an attacker may enjoy are meaningless when his or her target has access to a gun for self-defense. Even targets suffering from most physical disabilities can render their attacker’s ableism irrelevant.

In the end it is the people who social justice advocates label as privileged thate are the primarily advocates of gun control. They are the ones who can decide who can have a gun. They are the ones who can afford armed body guards. They are the ones who can live under gun control without concern.

Ermahgerd Weapon Lights

Do you have a weapon light mounted on any of your rifles or handguns? If so you’re a bad person. At least that’s what I get from the Denver Post’s recent article disguised as a study that attempts to link weapon lights to negligent police shootings:

In a deposition, Flanagan expressed his remorse and made a prediction.

“I don’t want anyone to ever sit in a chair I’m in right now,” he said. “Think about the officers that aren’t as well trained, officers that don’t take it as seriously, and you put them in a pressure situation, another accident will happen. Not if, but will.”

Flanagan was right. Three months after the October 2010 shooting in Plano, a 76-year-old man took a bullet in the stomach from a New York police officer trying to switch on the same flashlight model.

At least three other people in the U.S. over the past nine years have been shot accidentally by police officers with gun-mounted flashlights, an investigation by The Denver Post found. Two victims were fellow officers.

In Colorado, Denver’s police chief banned the use of tactical flashlights with switches below the trigger guard after two officers accidentally fired their guns last year.

One of the officers may have shot a suspect when his finger slipped from the flashlight switch to the trigger, firing a bullet into a car window of the fleeing driver.

How your finger could slip off of a light activation button located on the grip is positively beyond me. But reading through this article one is supposed to take away how dangerous weapon mounted lights are. In reality the article demonstrates that police departments provide poor training for offices.

I’m a firm believer that you should become intimately familiar with any weapon you plan to carry. You should know how everything on it operates normally, how it will likely fail, and how to recover from any failures. If you add accessories to a weapon you plan to carry you should know how to properly use them. Any failure due to inadequate training isn’t an indicator that the equipment is faulty, it’s an indicator that the training is faulty.

If police departments are having problems with officers and weapon mounted lights it demonstrates that those departments really suck at teaching their officers how to use weapons with attached lights. In my opinion it also demonstrates the poor quality of the officers since weapon mounted lights aren’t fucking rocket science. On lights with with a switch in front of the trigger guard I guess I can kind of see a scenario where a very inept person could negligently discharge the firearm when trying to activate the light. But I can perceive of no scenario where a light with a grip mounted switch could lead to a negligent discharge when the user went to activate the light. The trigger finger doesn’t even touch the switch. I think you would literally have to be retarded to fire a gun when you were really trying to press the grip mounted light switch.

The State Loves Soldiers Until It Doesn’t

The New York Times finally realized that police departments in modern American are beginning to resemble militaries. The article doesn’t contain much of interest if you’ve been following this militarization for any amount of time but there was a nugget worth mentioning:

In the Indianapolis suburbs, officers said they needed a mine-resistant vehicle to protect against a possible attack by veterans returning from war.

“You have a lot of people who are coming out of the military that have the ability and knowledge to build I.E.D.’s and to defeat law enforcement techniques,” Sgt. Dan Downing of the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department told the local Fox affiliate, referring to improvised explosive devices, or homemade bombs. Sergeant Downing did not return a message seeking comment.

This brings up the state’s hypocritical view of military personnel. We the people are constantly propagandized about how great the United States military is. According to this propaganda American soldiers are heroes who deserve devout worship. As civilians we’re supposed to thank any soldiers we come across for protecting our “freedoms”. But that’s only while soldiers are deployed overseas. Once they come back and leave the military they’re suddenly dangerous monsters that must be watched careful at all times and put down when they fail to do what they’re told.

I’m not sure why anybody would enter the military these days. It’s a shitty job that involves a great deal of risk. They pay isn’t great and the benefits are pretty nonexistent. And once your time in the military is completed you get to suffer a substandard medical system (it somehow manages to be worse than the standard medical system the rest of us are inflicted with) and be viewed like a threat from your former employer.

Hosting Major Gladiatorial Events is Expensive

Minneapolis will be hosting the Super Bowl in 2018. In order to do this the city had to agree to a long confidential list of demands from the National Football League (NFL):

Free police escorts for team owners, and 35,000 free parking spaces. Presidential suites at no cost in high-end hotels. Free billboards across the Twin Cities. Guarantees to receive all revenue from the game’s ticket sales — even a requirement for NFL-preferred ATMs at the stadium.

Those requirements and many others are detailed in 153 pages of NFL specifications for the game. An official on the host committee that successfully sought the game — Minneapolis beat out Indianapolis and New Orleans — said the panel had agreed to a majority of the conditions but would not elaborate.

The document, which the Star Tribune obtained through sources, has not been released publicly but shows how the NFL will control the event and many of its public aspects. The NFL declined to comment on the document and host committee officials are declining to make it public, citing state data privacy laws.

It doesn’t appear as though the Star Tribune posted the document so I can only assume that making the lives of the homeless miserable was also stipulated somewhere in that contract.

It’s amazing what a bunch of wealthy NFL officials demand from a city in order for it to be allowed the “privilege” of hosting one year’s major game. City officials will justify paying for all of this with tax money by claiming the game will bring major economic activity. Of course there is no way for them to know that before, during, or after the event because such things are unknowable (sorry Keynesians but you can’t accurately predict such things as the continued failure of you school to accurately predict economic matters has demonstrated). And we also know that hosting these games has nothing to do with economic activity. They’re just ways for city officials to make their dicks look bigger to other cities that wanted to host the game.

Support Your Local Neighborhood War Criminal

It’s almost certain that the next presidential race will involved a wishy washy Republican candidate going head to head with an honest to God war criminal, Hillary Clinton. There’s a political action committee (PAC) by the name of Ready for Hillary that is collecting money to encourage the wicked war monger who literally laughs about killing people to run for president. Best of all, this PAC is coming to town:

A group of DFL heavyweights including Gov. Mark Dayton, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. Reps. Rick Nolan and Betty McCollum and others are hosting a fundraiser for a super PAC aimed at helping Hillary Clinton’s potential run for president.

The fundraiser, held at the office of DFL donor Vance Opperman on June 18, will raise money for the Ready for Hillary PAC. The invitation obtained by MPR News also said it will launch the Minnesotans Ready for Hillary organization.

The invitation embedded at the link notes two levels of donating: $100.00 and $250.00. So if you have a minimum of $100 lying around and you really want to see a certified war criminal run for president (which is kind of rare because our presidents don’t usually become war criminals until they become president) here’s your chance. Or if you’d like to head over there and protest a war criminal’s fund raiser you can certainly do that.

Real Life Idiocracy

I keep telling people that the movie Idiocracy made an accurate prediction it just set itself too far into the future. We now officially have the opening to the movie. There is currently an investigation into a prostitution ring as Ford Hood:

FORT HOOD, Texas – Testimony was to resume at the military court hearing of a Fort Hood sergeant accused of setting up a prostitution ring with cash-strapped female soldiers.

Sgt. 1st Class Gregory McQueen is facing more than 21 criminal charges filed in March that include pandering, adultery and sexual assault.

I’m betting Mr. McQueen knows a pimp by the name of Upgrayedd:

After Getting the Super Bowl Minneapolis Begins Cracking Down on the Homeless

Minneapolis “won” (in other words bought) the “prestigious” award of hosting the 2018 Super Bowl. With only four years until the big game Minneapolis is scrambling to finish up its new stadium and to rid the city of, shall we say, undesirables. Stage one of creating the facade that Minneapolis doesn’t have a homeless problem has already begun:

As part of a campaign called “Give Real Change,” billboards have popped up along Hennepin Avenue urging people to instead give money to the organization, which aims to end homelessness.

Steve Cramer, president and CEO of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, said the effort is designed to help panhandlers, not hurt them.

“Everyone agrees, five bucks on the street is just going to perpetuate a life circumstance that is not conducive to long-term health,” he said. “That five dollars would be better invested in longer-term solutions to deal with the root cause of someone’s homelessness.”

When a city official talks about helping the homeless what he really means is making their lives so miserable that they go somewhere else. Part of this involves regulations that prevent people from assisting the homeless (for example, feeding them). Another part involves centralizing as much homeless assistance as possible under one easily controlled roof. Once resources are centralized it’s a trivial matter to distribute them in such a way as to maximize homeless misery.

We must also remember that this campaign is only stage one. Stage two will probably involve making it illegal to give money to panhandlers, stage three will likely involve a crackdown on anybody attempting to feed the homeless (again, to protect the homeless from food of questionable nutrition!), and stage four will probably involve rounding up all of the homeless people and driving them to the border of North Dakota a week before the Super Bowl begins.

But sometimes you have to make a few miserable lives more miserable if you want everybody coming into town for the big game to see how problem-free your town is!

They Just Want to Thump Some Skulls

Modern police departments have more in common with military forces than they do with security agencies. If you look at most private security providers they tend to have little in the way of riot gear, grenade launchers, and armored personnel carriers. But there are a lot of police departments with plenty of all three and much more. Likewise the strategies employed by the two organizations differ. Private security providers tend to be far less psychopathic because no business wants its customers harassed by a man with a badge every time they try to come in the store. Modern police departments often don’t bother knocking on the door before sending a battering ram and a flashbang through as a precursor to a full scale invasion.

As modern police departments become more militarized more people are becoming upset, which has lead to a few investigations. The Seattle Police Department has been under investigation for a while now due to its use of excessive force on minorities. This has lead to the department adopting new rules of engagement, which has made many of its officers unhappy:

(Reuters) – Seattle police officers filed a federal lawsuit on Wednesday challenging new policies that restrict use of force, saying the rules endanger lives of both officers and civilians.

More than 120 officers have joined the lawsuit, which seeks a complete dismantling of a new use of force policy hammered out between the Seattle Police Department and the U.S. Department of Justice to stem an alleged pattern of excessive force.

The Seattle Police Department has been under federal monitoring since 2012, following an investigation into a series of incidents in which officers appeared to engage in excessive force, particularly against minorities.

I believe that modern police departments, due to the strategies they employ more commonly every day, attract a special type of person. Namely people who actually enjoy hurting other people. Because of this we have police departments that are filled with vicious men who get upset whenever their ability to hurt other people is hindered.

If these officers were actually concerned with helping people they would already be using the bare minimum amount of force necessary to resolve situations. There wouldn’t be multiple reports of excessive force as other officers would come down on any of their fellows that employed it. But excessive force is the norm so long as the words “officer safety” can be written on the report. Officer safety shouldn’t be the primary concern of a police department, the safety of community members should be.

In an ideal world an individual signing up to become a police officer would do so with the understanding that their job is to protect members of the community. That necessarily requires putting one’s own life on the line to protect others, not putting other’s lives on the line to protect one’s self. If that is an idea that disturbs an individual then they should find another job.

Schools Reflect Prisons More and More Everyday

American schools and prisons become more of a mirror image every day. Prisons now contain classrooms, art centers, computer labs, libraries, and other things we would expect to find in a school. Schools are now surrounded by chain link fencing, guards and metal detectors are posted at entrances, and students are prohibited from having mechanisms that could conceal anything that they’re carrying:

A New York high school is the latest in the nation to ban backpacks following several bomb threats, and has even taken extra steps, including sealing up students’ lockers.

For the last two weeks of the school year, students at Wantagh High School — located about 34 miles east of New York City — are being forced to carry their books and belongings in plastic bags, sign in and out to use the bathroom and submit to searches when entering the building. But the sealing up of lockers took school security to a new level.

When I was in high school there were whispers of backpack bans but they were similar to the whispers about instating school uniforms: they are brought up every now and then only to be shot down by people who aren’t completely stupid. But now, from my understanding, backpack bans aren’t unheard of but the sealing up of lockers is new to me. Depending on the school an average student may have anywhere from four to eight classes. Trying to lug around everything you need for those classes all day is annoying to say the least. But schools are often spend a great deal of time making students’ lives miserable while paying lip service to making a safe learning environment.

At this rate they might as well just house students in prisons.

The Presidential Business Hit List

Regulatory agencies have for a long time been the tool of choice for the executive branch when it wanted to target things it didn’t like but didn’t want to wait for approval by the legislative branch. The current head of the executive branch has made no attempt to conceal his distain for guns so it’s not surprising to see that he sicced his dogs on firearm sellers:

The administration is using an anti-credit card fraud effort dubbed Operation Choke Point to go after legitimate businesses it deems “high-risk,” says a staff report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Internal Justice Department documents show that Attorney General Eric Holder was informed that small businesses were being hurt by the operation as banks dropped them and exited entire lines of business deemed “high-risk” by the government, yet his department has continued to pursue the operation, the report says.

[…]

The Washington Times has reported that several gun retailers have been dropped by their banks as a result of the operation — the most recent being Powderhorn Outfitters, a sporting goods shop in Hyannis, Massachusetts, which was dropped last week by TD Bank after a 36-year business relationship.

And gun stores aren’t the only organizations being targeted by Operation Choke Point. The Washington Times included a convenient picture that covers other so-called high-risk businesses that have cause the Department of Justice’s ire:

It’s pretty ironic that surveillance equipment made it onto a government list of high-risk merchants but I digress. While many people are focusing on the gun store angle specifically I think the take away from this story is that giving the state regulatory power is dangerous. Whenever something bad happens the government always steps in and offers to regulate that bad thing. If the Democrats are in power then self-proclaimed Democrats take the government up on its offer. If the Republicans are in power then self-proclaimed Republicans take the government up on its offer (even though they claim to want a smaller government). Neither side stops to consider the fact that their party won’t be in power forever and when the party in power changes those new regulatory powers will be used in a different manner.